On July 11, 2017 Mathias Gibbens, K0WBG made a presentation to the Upper Rio FM Society on a proposed tethered flight to test some experimental 5Ghz digital mesh link payloads. That presentation can be access here
A new page thread has been created to document the 2016 (and future) Near Space Challenge competitions. Visit the 2016 NSC recap for details.
PDF versions of NMSS_01 and NMSS_02 presentations have been uploaded to the web site.
The day before the launched of NMSS-02, Flying Apple Space Studies launched FAST-21 — an experiment in long distance high altitude ballooning — from a site in southern California. Their goal was to achieve neutral buoyancy long enough to fly across the US and the Atlantic Ocean.
Unfortunately, just after sunrise on Saturday, FAST-21 warmed up enough to reach an altitude of 114,000 feet where the balloon burst — dropping its payload only 8 miles from the NMSS-02 launch site about 1 hour before the scheduled NMSS-02 launch time!
Chase crews set to recover NMSS-02 split up with two vehicles heading out to recover FAST-21.
An interesting (and funny) blog entry on the Flying Apple Space Studies web site tells the whole story.
This site was created on December 20, 2013 to support the efforts of New Mexico Space Studies. We hope you find the site useful.